UK not polarised over trans equality

[SlouchingTowardsBethlehemAgain]

The British public are not bitterly polarised over trans equality, according to new research, which found a majority agreed schools should talk to pupils about transgender issues and that one in four knows a trans person personally.
Thought to be the most in-depth UK study to date of public attitudes to what has become a notoriously toxic discourse in politics and on social media, the report from More in Common identifies a radically different attitude among ordinary people, who approach issues of gender identity from a position of compassion and fairness, often informed by their own relationships with trans people. www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/16/britons-not-bitterly-polarised-over-trans-equality-research-finds

Unfortunately this is very much not how trans issues are being taught in school!

In reality it's more like, "everyone has a gender identity" and "gender is assigned at birth" and "if someone who is assigned male at birth likes pink and dolls they may be a girl" and "everyone is somewhere on the Barbie to Action Man spectrum".

Or because AIBU threads are for members to describe some sort of moral or social dilemma for other members to vote and comment on, in regards to whether the OP is being unreasonable or not? I don't see how that format applies to this thread.

It's possible to be compassionate and fair and to also think women need single-sex (not gender) spaces away from males.

This. In today's world, particularly on social media (including MN), there doesn't seem to be room for nuance anymore. Either something has to be wholly good or wholly bad, no inbetween; when in reality, it you step away from the screen things are a lot more grey.

I do know trans people in RL. They have nothing in common with TRAs and know transwomen are not female.

Me too. And I know one trans person for whom "trans" really is a sexuality and not a gender identity at all. Or at least it used to be a sexuality because he was an "erotic cross-dresser" when I knew him but now she has transitioned.

There is no way to tell who has gender dysphoria, who is transitioning for erotic reasons, and who has both motives.

There are many reasons for confusing gender identity and sexuality. I no longer know how much of that confusion is well intentioned.

That would depend on who they asked. But surely the researcher didn’t pick a biased research pool 😉

I think the majority of the uk population don’t understand the vitriol on both sides over this subject. I also think that saying you are okay with something is one thing until you encounter it I
person and then you understand it from a different perspective.

mobile.twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1537345888422600704

It's not both sides, though.

Only one 'side' is running Antifa cells.

The reality is that AIBU gets the most traffic.

It was the same with Brexit. Every single referendum thread got banished to the EU referendum board which was only read by a small number of users, when it was such an important topic that it would really have benefited from more visibility. And then afterwards people were all, "but how can this have happened?" like they'd been taken completely by surprise, because they hadn't gone looking for debate and discussion about it and had no idea about the issues at stake or the strength of feeling on the other side.

The self ID debate is also one that would benefit from wider engagement.

WTF my post has been deleted. Why Mumsnet?

It wasn't offensive in the least I just said that most Britons are not polarised because they think of trans people as being post op gender reassignment rather than biological men dressed as women who 'feel' like women and who expect to be treated as women.

Also most people have other things to thing about other than trans issues and unless issues around single sex spaces and sport affects them directly it's not something that most people consider.

I also referred to a PP who said that the 'survey' had been carried out partly in Brighton which would skew the results as there seemed to be a lot of confirmation bias in the results.

Lastly 1 in 4 people knows someone who is trans I don't think so, unless they happen to live in Brighton.

Maybe it was the bit in my previous post where I made a distinction between trans people who have surgery and men attracted to women who like to dress as women, or as they used to be known, transvestites who sometimes claim to be lesbians?

Is that is Mumsnet? Is transvestite a banned word now?

I can believe that 1 in 4 people in Brighton who were surveyed have met someone who self-identifies as trans or non-binary or something else under the Stonewall 'trans umbrella' definition.

That's the limit of my credulity.

@BloodyHellKen You may have to quote directly from Stonewall, with a link to the source, to be allowed it. That's all I'm saying.

It amazes me that anybody still reads the Guardian !.

There currently is a way to tell who has dysphoria and most likely had surgery versus those who just have gender identities and have done little or nothing.

That is because the current GRA rules remain as in 2004 when passed. The person needs background checks into their life, to provide hard evidence of a material change of status permanently, and reports with evidence of treatment by both medical and psychiatric doctors.

The people who qualify under these criteria are those medically defined as transsexuals. NOT transgender. It is only called the Gender Recognition Act because it recognised the need in some cases to default to biology - which transsexuals have always understood - in rape crisis,sport or job shortists for example. These have not been challenged by those currently with a GRC. It is coming from those outside wanting in.

Doctors told parliament in the debate in 2004 that approximately 5000 would qualify for the GRA and just under that number did over the first two or three years. And two decades later despite the huge rise in transgender ideology and activism over past years the total with a GRC in 2021 remained at just 5871. Out of 67 million UK population.

"one in four knows a trans person personally"

This is extremely misleading, and a case of ridiculous scaling. It's like surveying members of the National Gerbil Society and pronouncing that everyone in Britain buys dry seed mix.

I am in a position where I know two transwomen, both with GRCs. I also know that they are the only known transwomen with GRCs within an area of roughly a 70,000 population, and they are probably the only individuals with GRCs within a 210,000 population area. I also know who is not aware of these two people and, considering they are near enough recluses, it's practically everybody.

However, if you use a wider parameter for the definition of "trans", and include children, teenagers and young adults, who may be treating the label as a form of subculture, then the number expands considerably. But it is still not one in four by any means: that would suggest 25% of the population knows a transperson.

Going by a rough estimate of a 65 million population, this would mean that over 16 million people in Britain know a transperson.

As a useful comparison, there's only around 9 million people in London, so you are talking an extra 7 million on top of that (and Scotland is only about 5.5 million).

It also means that if you got every person in Britain who knew a transperson, according to this frankly silly research conclusion, to stand at half mile intervals, the line would stretch from the UK to East Timor.

That no one pointed this out to anyone at the Guardian says quite a lot about the rigor of their editors and subeditors, in my view.

My post above shows the entire reason for the demand for self ID.

Not as the lie tells you because it is 'too hard' to access help - because if you are transsexual it is not and you have already followed all the medical guidelines and made attempts to try and avoid transition - this being the requirements that transgender term 'hard' and transsexuals term 'essential'.

Yet the people with no actual medical reason to transition being unwilling to go via this vital checks and balance process they term it as an 'obstacle . Not what it truly is - common sense.

These people are in effect the cross dressers and various other things that have created the wave of 'transgender' people we see today under that silly banner. They feel excluded from the GRA by the processes involved but do not wish to follow. They were properly devised to balance rights of those for whom transition was permanent and NOT as an identity choice - and to give checks and balances to society also - therefore excluding chancers and those who might abuse much more easy access.

Every genuine trans person gets that and are not the ones calling for self ID.

It actively risks harm by equivocating those who followed the rules and went down the correct path through appropriate psychiatric assessment with the rest who only want status if they have to do nothing to achieve it.

Self ID is not what either women or the 5000 transsexuals presently covered by the GRA want. Why politicians are not seeing this obvious fact is a good question they need to answer but you never see the media ask it either oddly.

Indeed if - as the transgender mob are demanding - the (what they call) 'offensive' word transsexual gets replaced by transgender in law - it puts at risk the ongoing medical support for the 5000 covered for the past 20 years by not differentiating that need.

Self ID will be a disaster for both women and the small numbers for whom the GRA was written.

Exactly. Teach children facts, not propaganda.

The poll shows that only a minority think transmen are men and transwomen are women. The majority thinks intact male born people should stay out of women's safe spaces. The majority think male bodied people should stay out of women's sport.
Looks like the majority of people in this country are "evil terfy bigots" who are literally "seeking trans genocide". Or something

Given that most of the 5000 transsexuals with a GRC (I am one to be clear) with whom I have talked on this say much the same thing then we are probably nearly all those actually covered by the GRA right now are bigots too.

We have told them this in their consultations. In England at least I think they have listened and are sebsibly rolling back.

The government esewhere is dancing around that fact if they are not actually listening to the ones they created the law for in the first place and only the ones who have excluded themselves from accessing it already because they can only do so if the gatekeeping is removed. The gaekeeping that helps bring balance to the law and rightly would never haqve been passed without it. Indeed they could and should go further - such as axing the ridiculous primogeniture exemption the Lord added and by taking away any GRC if convicted of a crime. Both things exisating GRC holders have suggested but were ignored btw.

Some bright journalist - if we have any - should be asking for the difference here with on the same principle allowing anyone to self declare that they can drive a juggernaut down the motorway to speed up supplies in time of shortage. Right now they say they are not allowed as they have to prove they can do this safely given they might be taking dangerous cargo and could harm other road users with such a huge vehicle - but they insist they know they can do it so stop insisting someone has to gatekeep them.

I don't think it's right that people who have undergone medical transition and gone to all the trouble of getting a GRC should have the same rights as people who merely self ID.

I’ve read the Guardian story and skimmed the More in Common report.

It looks as if no clear explanations were given, in the survey, about the meaning/s of trans or transgender. Transsexuals weren’t mentioned. Most people quoted had little knowledge of the issues or conflicts of rights, and a very vague idea of what trans meant.

The report’s tone is of ‘be kind’ liberals who wish everyone would be nice to trans people.

Women’s rights got a couple of obligatory mentions in passing.

But The current trend for some journalists to pose ‘gotcha’ style questions to leading politicians on whether women can have penises, bears no relationship to how ordinary people think about these issues. The public do not want or need strict definitions, because they know these are very individual issues, which are complicated, and which require common-sense solutions. Very often those solutions will have to be worked out on a case-by-case basis, rather than through a blanket rule.

To which most people I know would say “No. It’s not complicated. Women are adult human females.” or some variant on that theme.

There are now people describing themselves as “soft GC”, presumably to distinguish themselves from the evil women who have been speaking about this with determination for years, even though they’re saying the exact same things.

When will they learn? There is no such thing as “soft GC” in the eyes of the activists. It’s not like boiling an egg. You either believe TWAW are literally women (and TM are literally men) or you will be called a bigot.

people describing themselves as “soft GC”,

Like women used to describe themselves as "I'm-not-a-feminist-but ..."

Yes, exactly. They are not distinguishing themselves from the people but from the word. That is called throwing people under the bus.

“I’m not the same as Forstater, Joyce, Sodha...”

”But you don’t believe TWAW?”

”No.”

So the difference is, they just have more courage?

That should say from the position. “Soft GC” is “TW aren’t women but should be treated with kindness and consideration, and that may involve pretending they are for social purposes.”

Soft GC, meet hard GC.